


Monster

by 35grams (caxxe)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: College AU, M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/pseuds/35grams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>literally just tumblr user korrakun's post "my favorite college experience is when i had a 7am class and the kid next to me literally poured a monster energy drink into his coffee said “i’m going to die” and drank the whole thing" except with these nerds</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> korrakun.tumblr.com/post/98336180125

Erwin blinked blearily at the too-bright projection in the too-dark lecture hall. The migraine was coming. Its foot was in the door. The curved walls did wonders for the room’s acoustics, but it was a shame it was wasted on the shrill feedback whines of the professor’s podium mic. 

He had circled, underlined, bolded and highlighted his registration date and hour months in advance. It was on his calendar, in his phone, and scrawled across at least seven post-it notes scattered across the walls, floor and ceiling of his dorm room. He should have known that a campaign in its final throes would do this.  Erwin wouldn’t exchange his summer as the Councilwoman’s campaign aid for anything, but he should have known that the opposition’s smear ad would air on registration day.  He must have fielded calls for twelve straight hours.

 He needed this economics prerequisite. There was no way around it. And there was no way around the only class that still offered it after he had all but flown to the nearest computer to sign in and register after playing damage control from sun up to sundown.

Seven in the morning. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Incredible.

Erwin needed to reconfigure his sleeping schedule, cut his club presidencies to five and maneuver his bookkeeping gigs and hours as Councilwoman’s aid the way one would play a championship round of four dimensional tetris, but the early hour became tolerable in a few weeks. It helped that, in that time, he discovered another incentive to get up before the sun.

It was wrong, he knew, but he let the irritable journalism major copy his homework and translate his immaculately written notes into the explosive scrawl in his own notebook for a week, then two, then three. It was symbiotic. The one got his notes. The other was reimbursed with cursory glances at the brush of black strands on a pale cheek, at lithe fingers and groomed nails, at dangerously oversized sweaters in mint and teal and grey paired with leggings or too-tight jeans.

His first attempts at conversation were met with silence, punctuated by deep, rhythmic breathing. Erwin had never seen someone look so convincingly attentive as they in fact slept straight through each lesson.

It was becoming impossible to force his own eyes open. His essays only crossed the maximum page count by three rather than his usual ten, and he was forced to adopt abbreviations in his notes. He worried his lip and wrung his hands now as he handed his notes to Levi, their morning ritual soured by his mind as it swarmed with imagined accusations of negligence or sloth. He was hardly reassured that Levi said nothing of the sort or noticed anything at all - he only assumed that he said as much behind his back, then.

Levi’s head came up one Monday morning, startled awake by a muted pop. He turned, eyes widening as they shot to Erwin upending a Monster into his coffee. Looking more awake than he had been all semester, Levi watched, mouth parted in disbelief, as Erwin downed it in one go following a shrug and a mumbled “I’m going to die”.

Erwin began to doubt his ingenious plan when he couldn’t quite tell whether his heart was pounding so fast that it became a continuous hum, or not at all.

***

Erwin’s face burned. The heat must have been turned on overnight. He waved a languid hand through the air to rid himself of the covers, but it met with something else. Someone.

His face burned again. He sat up this time, eyes thrown open by the stinging blow. He wasn’t in his bed. This was the library’s hard desk, and the place was closing, he assumed as he caught the eye of a cross librarian at the front desk, then the deep evening blue through a window.

Those weren’t his covers either. It was Levi’s smarting palm, threatening to come down again. Levi lowered it as Erwin sat up with a groan, heart pounding in his ears and chest agonizingly tight.

"Had your fun, Mr. President?" Levi said and threw a book at him. Erwin winced  as it hit his chest, recognized it as his own, and flipped through, brows drawing down as he reached the end. It hadn’t been a quarter filled that morning.

It was full.  Both sides. Margins included. Several pages had a second layer of notes scrawled over the old.

"But I only had four other classes toda-"

"It’s Wednesday."

Erwin rubbed his eyes and made to stand before Levi sent a flurry of papers into his face. “Choose four,” he said, and crossed his arms. Erwin frowned as the words registered in his swimming vision. Club resignation letters. Erwin’s signature was lovingly forged on all five.

He crumpled the pages and said as firmly as he could in a voice heavy with sleep, “I know you mean well, but-” he began, stopping as Levi took from his bag copies of the same pages and waved them just out of reach.

"Choose four or I’ll choose five," he said, and tugged sharply at Erwin’s arm, forcing him up and out before the librarian called security.

"You don’t- you don’t have to-" Erwin’s protests were betrayed by a monstrous yawn.

"Can’t get the notes if you’re dead."

Erwin brought his hand to his chest in mock offense. “All this just for notes?”

"Yes," said Levi, a moment too soon, a register too high.

Erwin smoothed out the resignation forms as Levi walked him home.


End file.
